Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/85

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Spitted on spear (as if a Belgian babe)

And saw the walls in smoke and flame ascend

To hover heav'nward with wide-brooding wings

Above the "vanished thing" that once was Troy!

O shards of sanctuaries and of homes!

O embers, ashes grey, and glinting dust!

Ye who were tile or tower in Laon or Ypres,

A village by the Somme, a church in Roye,

A bit of glass in Reims, a convent bell

In St. Dié, a lycée in Verdun,

A wayside crucifix in Mézières,

Again I hear a cry: "Can these bones live?"

Yes! As the bones, o'er which the Prophet cried

And called the breath from Heav'n's four winds to breathe,

Sprang straightway bone to bone, each to its place,

To frame in flesh the features and the forms

They still remembered and still loved to hold

Once more on earth—so shall ye rise again!

Out of their quarries, cumulus, the clouds

Will furnish back your flame in crystal stone;

The cirrus dawns in Parsee tapestries

With azure broiderings will clothe your walls;

The nimbus noons will shower golden rain

And sunset colours fill each Gothic arch;

For o'er thy stricken vales, O valiant France,

Our love for thee shall prophesy anew,

And Heav'n's Four Winds of Liberty, allied,

Shall breathe unpoisoned in thy streets till they

Shall pulse again with life that laughs and sings,

And yet remembers, singing through its tears

The music of an everlasting song—

Remembers, proudly and undyingly,

The hero dust that lies in shrouds of blue

But rises as thy soul, immortal France! John Finley